And sure enough, Carson no longer is on the List. Carson’s former Extremist profile now redirects to a page with this statement:

In October 2014, we posted an “Extremist File” of Dr. Ben Carson. This week, as
we’ve come under intense criticism for doing so, we’ve reviewed our profile and
have concluded that it did not meet our standards, so we have taken it down and
apologize to Dr. Carson for having posted it.

Legal Insurrection first brought this travesty to public attention last Friday. Whether you agree with Carson or not, he didn’t deserve to be on a list with Klan and Neo-Nazi leaders (there are a few other people who don’t deserve to be on the list, but that’s a different matter.)

Since our report, the issue has been the subject of hundreds of columns, radio shows, and obviously SPLC, worth $300,000,000, felt the heat.

Who says a small blog can’t make a difference.

Should I do it? Should I? Okay, here goes: (WARNING, MAY CAUSE SEIZURES)

Let’s review. SPLC supports selective exclusion, not principled tolerance. SPLC judges people by the color of their skin, not content of their character. SPLC supports class diversity. SPLC is pro-choice. It regards human life as a commodity, interchangeable and disposable, from conception through a natural, accidental, or premeditated death. Most people would conclude that SPLC expresses views that are extreme.

SPLC, the moral axioms are individual dignity and intrinsic value. These are non-negotiable. Go forth and reconcile.

So the Southern Poverty Law Center has taken Dr. Carson off it’s “Extremist” list. Which means there is now room for me!

Allow me to (modestly) list the reason why I deserve to be denounced by the SPLC:

– I am married to a beautiful black African lady, which obviously means I am a closet KKKer.
– I don’t own a firearm, which obviously means I am an unstable gun nut.
– I judge people by the content of their character and not their skin color, which obviously makes me Bull Connor reincarnated.
– I have advanced degrees in mathematics and engineering, which obviously makes me anti-science.
– I am not a homosexual, which obviously makes me a homophobe.
– I am a Christian, which obviously makes me an Islamophobe.
– I breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, which obviously makes me a global wa-, er, climate change-denier.

Mark my words, the left will do what they do when a black man refuses to stay on the progressive plantation. They will find some white woman who will claim that Dr. Carson sexually abused her. Watch for it.

Why are these people the “Keepers of the List” anyway? Just getting someone off a list or on a list isn’t the issue. The issue is organizations such as this endangering people’s lives, denigrating people’s names and reputations and generally just being mean hit squads. In my opinion the SPLC is no different than the Klan, Nazis or an other organization that uses the power of the media to hurt others.

To understand why SPLC has appointed itself the “Keeper of the List”, you first have to understand the late Eric Hoffer’s observation about organizations dedicated to social change. He succinctly said:

‘Every good cause starts as a movement, becomes a business, and ultimately degenerates into a racket’.

One of the big Alabama newspapers did a layout profiling Morris Dees a few years ago. Lavish home. Exquisitely furnished.

I know which phase I think Dees and the SPLC find themselves using Hoffer’s ideas about how social causes progress. And it ain’t the first one.

Your posts on this blog were my introduction to the fact that the SPLC is a much more extreme and corrupted organization than the average layperson thinks it is.

It’s easy to think that something called the Southern Poverty Law Center would be generally on the side of the angels, just as it’s easy for people to think that something called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) would be.

But in both cases — protecting the poor and the marginalized against systematic oppression in the case of SPLC; or being a voice for abused or neglected animals in the case of PETA — the name and the implied mission don’t really have much to do with the reality of these organizations.

Let’s remember the classic case of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee, which, six years after its founding, could better be called, after it was headed by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, the Non-Student Violent Co-ordinating Committee. (Both of them later changed their names, but that’s still the name of the Wikipedia articles about them, because they weren’t famous for what they did later)

I suspect the donor base pushed back when they saw someone as esteemed as Dr. Carson had been targeted.

It can’t be repeated often enough. The SPLC was founded when Morris Dees, an inductee into the Direct Marketers Hall of Fame, decided hawking self righteous outrage to affluent liberals was more lucrative than selling cookbooks to housewives. All the SPLC has ever cared about is keeping the cash rolling in.

“We laud Dr. Carson for his many contributions to medicine and his philanthropic work, and we, like so many others are inspired by his personal story (the truth about Dr. Carson ends here, injustice begins now). NEVERTHELESS, particularly because Dr. Carson is such a prominent person (and spoke truth to power at the 2014 Nat’l Prayer Breakfast), we believe that his views should be closely examined (not by us but by the IRS now).”